wxman
Pulling my weight
I agree with your theory. I however don't think opening backup stores will help. Might buy some time. But not much time. Maybe enough time for a gray/grey Hikvision market seller to dump their current Hikvision inventory. But not much more time than that.
I say this because all it takes is one upset customer to complain to Hikvision corporate about a gray/grey market Hikvision product they purchased, while also giving Hikvision corporate their unique Hikvision Id for that Hikvision product. Then a simple trace can and will be done to determine what supplier purchased that Hikvision product and then that account will be deactivated.
I don't see Hikvision corporate walking away out of frustration or somehow being easily confused by any game playing by anyone, on who is continuing to sell their products in the gray/grey markets. It might seem that way at this stage, but this just started.
The facts speak for themselves. Virtually every large online store when notified by a corporations legal team that their online store is hosting sellers who are selling grey/market products. Will and does now deactivate any account with any sellers that are doing that. All of the major online stores have recently stated such, in recent press releases.
Alibaba set the golden standard for this and all major online stores have since followed their lead:
http://www.wsj.com/articles/alibaba-cleans-up-gray-market-for-some-prestigious-brands-1407699693
In some cases. Some online stores have offered corporations that open stores with them. The ability to review any listing which uses their trademarked names, prior to any of those listing actually going live. They are held in pending queue based on a trademark name match. Which only the trademark owner/holder can release from that queue.
They also have the ability based on the store Id. To allow that store to post listings in the future and bypass pending queues as part of the service that the online stores offer them. So that they won't clog up their pending queues. These services make it exceptionally easy to quickly kill gray/gray markets in online stores. Simply by using trademarked names.
Note: Some wholesale domain name sellers have been using a similar technique for many years now when someone attempts to create domain names which include trademarked names. So, this is not new technology. It's simply taken some time to be used by major online stores as an incentive to get large corporations to open stores with them. In many cases they charge the trademark holder an annual fee for this service.
Don
Agreed. It wouldn't be a permanent solution. Only a temporary fix to dump their current inventory. It would be much too risky to try it long term as, like you said, eventually Hikvision would trace a serial number back to the supplier and shut them down. About the only way they'd get away with it long term is if Hikvision only loosely enforced the policy. If Hikvision really doesn't care and only made the policy to please those dealing with the non-china offices, then they won't waste their time tracing serial numbers and such..On the other hand, if Hikvision really is serious about cutting down on the gray market, it wouldn't take too much effort to track down the offenders.